comparing strings

Dear friends,

happy new year to everybody!

Is there someone out there who can answer my simple question:
How to compare strings with XPath/XSLT, something like strcmp() in C
or compareTo() in Java?
I want a pure XSLT solution without using extensions.

For those of you who are interested I have a little use case:

Consider this simplified dictionary:
<longman>
   ...
   <term>oz</term>
   <term>ozone</term>
   <term>p</term>
   <term>pa</term>
   <term>pace</term>
   <term>pacemaker</term>
   <term>pacesetter</term>
   <term>pachyderm</term>
   <term>pacific</term>
   <term>pacifier</term>
   <term>pacifism</term>
   <term>pacifist</term>
   <term>pacify</term>
   <term>pack</term>
   <term>package</term>
   <term>packaged</term>
   <term>packaging</term>
   <term>packed</term>
   <term>packer</term>
   <term>packet</term>
   <term>packing</term>
   <term>pact</term>
   <term>pad</term>
   ...
</longman>

Question: given an arbitrary input term (e.g. as a parameter), how
can I display the next 10 terms, starting with my input or the
term which would follow directly in alphabetical order?

If I had numbers instead of strings, the following template would
solve the required task:

<xsl:param name="input" />

<xsl:template match="term">
   <xsl:if test=". >= $input and
                 not(preceding-sibling::term[10] >= $input)">
      <!-- display . in some appropriate way -->
   </xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

Regards,
Oliver


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|  ob|do        Dipl.Inf. Oliver Becker                             |
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